Quality Control On Strained Semiconductor Devices

New semiconductor devices are based very often on strained silicon which promises to squeeze more device performance out of current devices. With strained silicon it is possible to get the same device performance using less power. The technique is using strain as a 'design element' for silicon to improve the device performance and has become a hot topic in semiconductor research in the past years. However in the same time topics like 'System in Package'(SiP) on thin wafers are getting more and more important. The chips of thin wafers in advanced packaging are extremely sensitive to induced stresses due to packaging issues. If we are using now strain as a design element for improving device performance we increase the sensitivity again and therefore also the risk of aging of such SiP's. High Resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) techniques such as Rocking Curves (RC's) and Reciprocal Space Mapping (RSM) are therefore very powerful tools to study the stresses in packaged devices.